Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Chutney

A preserved apple and onion chutney flavored with vinegar, sugar, cayenne pepper, and optional raisins or garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chutney

  1. Break apples into a preserving pan and add quartered apples.

  2. Chop onions and add to the pan with all other ingredients except sugar.

  3. Boil slowly until the mixture softens and becomes a pulp.

  4. Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve and stir well.

  5. If too hot, add finely chopped raisins when cold.

  6. Adjust vinegar quantity for desired thickness.

Rest and bottle

  1. Let it sit for a day before bottling.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Vinegar + garlictop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down into pulp, giving the chutney its body and thickness.
Onions
Add savoury bulk and aroma as they soften during slow boiling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the chutney.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and the heat of the spice.
Cayenne pepper
Provides heat and a sharp, spicy edge to the chutney.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until the mixture becomes a pulp. Slow boiling lets the apples and onions break down evenly without scorching on the base of the pan. Too fast a boil can burn the sugar and leave an uneven texture. Pectin in the apples helps the mixture thicken as it reduces.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, onion, vinegar, sugar, pepper, garlic):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, onion, vinegar, sugar, pepper, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More apple chutney recipes

Tomato 3 See all 37 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes